Friday Finds: Dumping In Our Neighbor's Backyard

Washington cruise ships dump on Canadian watersIt turns out that cruise ships subject to ship pollution standards in Alaska and Washington State have found a way to cruise around the new rules by dumping their waste in nearby Canada, a practice that's currently legal thanks to a patchwork of inconsistent and lax international cruise pollution regulations. Earthjustice is working to curtail the rude and un-neighborly practice, which mucks up the ocean and harms marine life.

New Nike ad has enviro activists kicking and screaming A new Nike promotional ad featuring a West Virginia University football player in front of a mountaintop removal mine has ticked off environmentalists, who argue that the ad is endorsing a destructive form of strip mining. The WVU athletic department disagrees, saying that the ad is meant to honor the victims of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in W. Virginia last April, yet that explosion occurred in an underground mine, while the ad denotes a surface mine. The devil's in the details.

Midwest trumps coasts in number of green buildings and roofs
East and West coasters seemingly never tire of touting their eco-friendly credentials, so you have to hand it to Chicago for bringing coastal elitism down a notch by claiming both the highest number of LEED-certified buildings and the highest square footage of green rooftops in the U.S. Note: This is news to most people because Midwesterners are taught that it's not polite to talk about themselves. Take that, coasties!

BP teaches kids about the environment
It looks like BP's influence is permeating more than just the Gulf of Mexico. The Sacramento Bee recently reported that seven years ago BP, despite its horrendous environmental record even before the Deepwater Horizon spill, was asked by California state officials to help develop its environmental science education curriculum. The California EPA claims that BP's role was "minor." Then again, "minor" is the same word that former BP CEO Tony Haward used to describe the oil spill in the first place.